Description

Composition Studies Through a Feminist Lens offers students a lucid and engaging introduction to the discipline’s history, struggles, and accomplishments through the lens of feminism. By illuminating a vast array of feminist contributions to the rhetorical tradition, writing theory, and classroom pedagogy, Shari J. Stenberg shows how feminist scholars have made Composition Studies a more inclusive and innovative field.

Stenberg introduces Composition Studies through three of its origin stories—the Harvard exam, the rhetorical tradition, and the process paradigm—with an eye on how efforts to legitimize the field often resulted in the marginalization of women’s voices and feminist knowledge. Composition Studies Through a Feminist Lens then moves feminist knowledge to the center, showing how feminist scholars have revised these stories to offer a more expansive approach to the purposes and processes of writing and rhetoric. Part one features feminist expansions of rhetoric, showcasing how feminist scholars have revised the traditional values and practices of classical rhetoric that shape contemporary ideas about argument and writing. Part two shifts to the composition classroom, showing how feminists have revised the role of student, teacher, and researcher. Students will gain a sense of how feminist contributions have expanded possibilities for learning and writing in the composition classroom. In addition to providing a compelling overview of feminist contributions to Composition Studies, Stenberg supplies engaging discussion questions designed to facilitate readers’ connections among the material presented, their writing lives, and contemporary culture—thereby adding their own voices to the stories of our field.

Composition Studies Through a Feminist Lens is the third volume in Parlor Press’s Lenses on Composition Studies series, which features texts written specifically for upper-level undergraduate and entry-level graduate courses in Composition Studies.

About the Author

Shari J. Stenberg is Associate Professor of English and the Composition Program Director at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she teaches courses in writing, feminist rhetorics, and pedagogy. She is the author of Professing and Pedagogy: Learning the Teaching of English and her writing on pedagogy, teacher development, and feminist theory appears in journals including College English, College Composition and Communication, Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition and Culture, and Composition Studies.

Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Composition’s Origin Stories Through a Feminist Lens

The Origin Stories of Composition Studies Through a Feminist Lens
The Harvard Story: The Birth of Composition Studies from a Test and a Course
For Writing and Discussion
Classical Rhetoric as Composition’s Proper Ancestor
For Writing and Discussion
The Process Paradigm: Composition as a Science
For Writing and Discussion
Looking Ahead
Works Cited
For Further Reading

2 The Rhetorical Tradition Through a Feminist Lens: Locating Women

Locating Women among Ancient Voices: Aspasia and Diotima
For Writing and Discussion
Locating Available Means to Authority: Women’s Rhetorical Challenges to the Church
For Writing and Discussion
Locating Women’s Rhetorical Challenges to Femininity
For Writing and Discussion
Locating a Public Voice: The Rhetoric of the Suffragists and Abolitionists
For Writing and Discussion
Works Cited
For Further Reading

3 Difference, Form, and Topoi Through a Feminist Lens

Acknowledging Difference among Women
For Writing and Discussion
Rejecting the Master’s Tools
For Writing and Discussion
Revising Rhetorical Contexts
Works Cited
For Further Reading

4 Teacher and Student Identity Through a Feminist Lens

The Teacher as the (Feminized) Disciplinarian: Cleaning Student Texts, Cleaning Students
For Writing and Discussion
The Composition Teacher as (Maternal) Nurturer
For Writing and Discussion
Writing Teacher, Critical Teacher
For Writing and Discussion
Where We Are, Where We’re Headed: The Composition Teacher as Rhetor
For Writing and Discussion
Works Cited
For Further Reading

5 Research and Writing Through a Feminist Lens: A Focus on Experience

Raising Consciousness of and about Women Writers
For Writing and Discussion
From Research on Gender to Feminist Research
For Writing and Discussion
The Evolving use of Experience
For Writing and Discussion
Works Cited
For Further Reading

6 Argument Through a Feminist Lens

Persuasion, Conflict, and Negotiation Through a Feminist Lens
For Writing and Discussion
Beyond the Monologic Voice
For Writing and Discussion
Rhetorical Listening
For Writing and Discussion
From Monologic to Dialogic: A Feminist Revision of Argument
Works Cited
For Further Reading
Epilogue
Works Cited
Notes
Index
About the Author